


Victim of Circumstance

by inkpink



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: 7 minutes in heaven, F/F, He/him pronouns used for Venus b/c narrative is from Jupiter's POV, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Internalized Homophobia, Making out in broom closets, implied past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 16:51:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11166030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkpink/pseuds/inkpink
Summary: Jupiter kisses Venus during 7 Minutes in Heaven instead of copping a feel on that fluffy hair and calling her harmless. Inspired by my outrage that Jupiter and Venus never kissed.





	Victim of Circumstance

**Author's Note:**

> Still thinking about these girls
> 
> Title taken from one of the tracks on the OST

It is petrifyingly silent. Venus keeps blinking, like he’s trying to get sunspots out of his eyes. Dust kisses the soles of your boots as you follow him into the dark. A dry humming seems to permeate your thoughts, like lights are bumping into one and other behind your eyes. Maybe it’s fear. 

Your flashlights have both been left in the main room under Neptune’s watchful eye. Your mouth still tastes largely of paint thinner and grenadine. You'd never known alcohol could taste so much like lighter fluid. You snap your hair tie against your wrist as you round what you presume is a corner. It’s too dark to make out anything more than the shadow of Venus in front of you. He’s like a reverse lighthouse: a spot of darkness against even more. Your footsteps creak eerily in some places and fall silent in others. This hallway could go on for ten more paces or stop in a heartbeat. It’d make more sense to shuffle your arms along the wall, feeling your way through instead of stepping blindly forward, but neither of you are willing it admit that you need to. 

Venus walks with his shoulders hunched up by his ears, like a dove settling in to roost. His hands are jammed deep into his pockets. 

A loud thump sounds suddenly, followed by a yelp. The noise reverberates through the old shack. The ground below your feet quakes as it is forced to bear the full weight of a teenaged boy. Your hand strays reflexively towards your wrist.  _ The devil. The devil is here. It’s here he’s here she's here the devil is- _

You make to reach for him in the darkness, then think better of it. 

“Jupiter?” 

Venus’s voice trembles from somewhere below you, sounding dazed. A piece of wood has crumbled from the roof, shedding just enough light to illuminate your immediate future. The stark white of Venus’s button-down is visible against the filthy flooring. His pale blonde hair is haloed around him. His face is caught in a ray of moonlight, eyes huge and terror-stricken. You watch him scrabble through the darkness for a moment before the sound of your name actually registers. 

“Huh?”

“Can you lend me a hand? I, um, can't see anything.”

“Oh. Right.”

For some reason, you can't move towards Venus. Your hand is disconnected from your body, a leaden weight on the end of your arm. You’d reach for your hair tie, but you  _ can’t- _

“Jupiter?” he repeats. His voice is softer than candlelight. 

“I'm coming.”

You catch the edge of one elbow and haul him up by it, pulse thudding in your wrist. He’s lighter than you expected.

“What did you crash into?”

You can hear the rustling of fabric, like he’s checking for damage.

“Some sort of wall? I'm not sure.”

You reach a hand out to shuffle along the wood. It’s damp and pitted, giving slightly beneath your fingers. What feels like scratch marks are raked in long swathes down the length of it. Your fingers bump tarnished metal. A doorknob on a wall? 

You summon your courage, turn your wrist until you hear the click of bone, and tug. 

The door creaks slowly open. It feels like Final Judgement. You wipe your sticky palms on the olive canvas of your army jacket. 

“Is this a broom closet?” you mutter, mostly to keep the suffocating silence from smothering you.

“I don't see any brooms,” Venus offers, still blinking rapidly. You wonder if maybe he’s crying. You don't ask.

The closet is dually moldy-damp and dusty-dry. Stepping inside, you peer through the inky darkness. The wood of the floor has rotted away in one of the corners, betraying the slick heart of the forest. A few cleaning materials that likely haven’t been used since before The Flood slump against the wall diametric. They’re absolutely feculent. Probably last owned by Eve herself. Congrats - you've managed to find the one thing at camp more antediluvian than the Bonfire Captain's ideals. 

You can't see it, but you can feel the weight of Venus’s wide eyes boring into your back. After a moment’s hesitation, he slips in alongside you. The door, you soon discover, is slightly too large for the frame. You couldn’t build a structure this outrageously shitty if you tried. When you finally manage to wedge it shut, it sticks. 

“So,” Venus says. The afterimage of him is still burned into your mind: his platinum blonde hair paired with delicate features, cheeks flush with Summer Scouts’ finest. On impulse, you reach for him. He stiffens as you make contact in the dark, fumble at his forearms. Your skin against his is sticky with sweat. You don’t remember the last time you were this close to someone.

“Yeah,” you agree. Tentatively, his hands come up to frame your face. They're coated with dust from his fall. “It’s not weird for me to have chosen you,” you hazard.

“I just sort of thought you were going to choose Neptune, is all.” Your hands slip from his wrists to trace the hastily-embroidered cross on his shirt pocket.

He’s right. There is no reason for you to have chosen him. No reason save the stone of cowardice sitting heavy in your gut.

Neptune is quite possibly the most beautiful and most dangerous girl you have ever met. Her eyes are bottomless pits that lead straight to hell. To invite her into this closet with you would have been to lock yourself in with the devil. 

Your parents would have been so disappointed. 

The snap of elastic breaks the silence.

“We’re friends too, right?” you say, seeking his face in the dark. The closet is so tiny, you can feel his every move against you. 

“We’re friends?”

His honesty smarts like a sunburn. You breathe deep.

“No,” you cut across, looping your arms around his neck. “We’re not friends.”

 Venus’s back hits the closet wall. One of the brooms falls to the ground. 

“Are you afraid?” you breathe.

“I'm not sure,” Venus says. The closet is so cramped, you can feel him breathing as much as hear it. To steady yourself, you finger one of the buttons on his shirt. “Are you?" 

You’re definitely afraid, but if it was Neptune you were touching, you’d be terrified. 

“No,” you lie, “You’re safe. Like a puppy. You won't hurt me.” 

“I don't want to hurt anyone,” he whispers.

“Exactly.”

Venus sighs softly against your cheek. His breath is hot in contrast to the cool, damp air of the closet. The smell of mold is leeching into the moment, mingling perversely with the strong scent of soap that clings to Venus. Your skin itches.

“You’re not like other boys,” you amend.

A smile that you sense more than see blooms across his face. His laugh flutters his chest against your palm.

“Thank you.” 

You want something very badly, something you cannot grasp, so you go for the next best thing and thread your fingers through his hair. It feels like dandelion fluff. You can’t stop shaking. 

“Are you alright, Jupiter?”

There are fingertips tiptoeing up your spine.

The two of you are dust, and to dust you will return, and it is the certainty of your eventual damnation that emboldens you enough to kiss him. Your courage is selenotropic. 

Venus lets out a tiny, surprised chirp. His lips are sickly sweet and soft, spun from the same thread of loose promises as the songs you're forced to sing around the campfire. His hair feathers in your grasp. Your mouth is flooded with a taste like lightening, a crackling burn that you assume is the booze. It is sunlight at midnight. It is shadows where streetlights should shine. It is holy fire and a throat full of angel feathers. Venus is the deepest kind of dangerous, and you comprehend that in the delicate brush of his mouth against your own. A terrible angel, bristling with light and fear. Your heart pounds as though trying to pump blood to more limbs than four. The cramped space seems filled with fireflies.

It is horrible and wicked and wrong to be kissing someone alone in a dirty closet, but it is less horrible for them to Venus. It is sinful and painful and evil to touch someone like this at all, but in the dark, it’s like nothing’s really happening. You are hands and eyes, and nothing more. Asomatous together. You cannot be held responsible. For seven minutes, there is no one you must answer to. For seven minutes, you can blink and feel.

The moment is tangible in the sense that you can feel it right down to your bones, card his downy hair through your hands and rub the crisp fabric of his collar between your fingertips. You are composed of touch and sight. Mind fogged with alcohol and shock, it seems that nothing is real. 

It is the most grounded you’ve felt all summer.

You're not the kind of girl that drags boys into closets at summer camp. You're not the kind of girl who drinks filched spirits traded for hard cash and nail polish. You’re Jupiter. You're good. You're cool. You’re fine. Regardless of whether or not all that’s true.

Venus noses at your cheek, lips hovering over yours. He coos softly when your hands skate from his arms to his chest, a sound in the back of his throat that makes your head spin. You are not fine. You are not cool, you barely know what to do with yourself, where to put your hands or what to do but. There is something pure in this kiss. You are not good, you are more, you are so much  **more** .

You make to reach for your hair tie, but Venus’s hands have come to rest gently on your wrists. His tenderness is heartbreaking.

“You’ve never kissed anyone before, have you?” you ask. His fingers are wandering your jaw, featherlight touches that remind you of butterfly wings. 

“Have you?”

“Truth or dare is over,” you remind him. His hands still. 

“I haven't,” he confesses. You shrug. A moment passes. “I'm sorry,” he adds.  

“I've never wanted to,” you admit.

That doesn't mean you've never kissed anyone, and you think Venus grasps the subtext in the clasp of your fingers on his wrist.

You rest your head on his shoulder, the fringe of your eyelashes tickling his pulse point. He’s so much more fragile than you expected him to feel. 

“I'm sorry,” he murmurs again.

“That really does get old, Venus.”

“I'm so-” 

He chokes on the words. 

You bury your face in his neck and pretend not to have heard. Venus is harmless, you say, but the leap in the pit of your stomach says otherwise.  

Your radio squeaks against your thigh.

You think you must know the devil, and she’s not the girl keeping watch a hallway away with moonshine on her breath. The devil is not the soft huff of Venus’s breath against your lips, muffled apologies and sticky skin. The devil is the captain of the soccer team, student council president, and the first name on honor roll each year. The devil is bundled in cheap façades and an old jacket. You have known the devil all your life. 

_ The devil is. _

Your hands curl into the babyfine hairs at the nape of Venus's neck, but your hair tie snaps against your wrist.

**Author's Note:**

> Venus deserves so much 
> 
> If you’d like me to further elaborate on or don’t understand why I used he/him pronouns for my precious daughter, feel free to ask me in the comments and I’d be happy to explain!


End file.
